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How to perform an Active Directory security audit

As a security professional, you depend on Active Directory to provision users, but how secure is your implementation of AD itself? Learn how to perform an Active Directory security audit in this expert tip.

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and applications, one of two answers is almost always given: LDAP or Active Directory.

While the first is an international standard repository supported by almost all of the directory vendors in the marketplace, Active Directory has almost as large of an enterprise deployment footprint as all of the LDAP vendors combined (even though it is supplied by a single vendor, Microsoft). From its initial use as a tool for authenticating a few interconnected PCs, it has grown into the premier enterprise repository. With the level of complexity needed for today's enterprise repository deployments, IT managers spend hours and hours on design and support activities to ensure the features and functions of Active Directory meet the needs of the organization. But some IT managers overlook the most important task: securing their Active Directory itself.

IT managers spend hours and hours on design and support ... of Active Directory. But some IT managers overlook the most important task: securing their Active Directory itself.

Active Directory contains the keys to the kingdom when it comes to group and user account information. In most cases, if an organization's Active Directory deployment were to experience a catastrophic event, no one within the organization would be able to access the services they need to perform their duties.

So what's the best way to determine if the security of an Active Directory infrastructure is sufficient? A periodic Active Directory security audit is required to ensure that Active Directory is being properly managed and protected. But audit personnel must understand what coverage areas are important for the security of an Active Directory deployment and what to look for. The list below will help in understanding how to ensure Active Directory security:

Policy and architecture – Active Directory, like any enterprise service, must have a long-term management plan. Auditors should look for well-documented policies and architectures that define what information is owned by Active Directory, who is allowed to access it, what Active Directory's functional role is within the organization and how architectural changes should be made and documented.

Physical placement – At the lowest level, ensuring that Active Directory servers and their domain controllers are secure means ensuring that they are located in physically secure spaces. Whether in professional data centers or locked communications closets, Active Directory servers should always be protected against physical theft. Finding Active Directory servers under desks or in open, unsecured spaces may be an indicator that the organization's deployment of Active Directory is insufficient to secure it.

Distributed deployment – Due to the criticality of the role that Active Directory plays in allowing access to systems and services, Active Directory repositories should be distributed across the organization. While an architecture project should be in place to determine where the Active Directory repositories should be distributed, some good positions to consider are geographic locations with slow wide area network links, physical areas of large populations of users, and an area close to identity access services that use Active Directory for authentication/authorization. Also, a good replication service must be in place between the distributed servers to ensure that denial-of-service (DoS) attacks will have minimal impact. Placing Active Directory services close to the users who depend on them for access ensures that network and power outages will minimize downtime.

Administrative access – Organizations should take advantage of Active Directory's multi-level administrative access services to tailor administrative functions to administrative privileges. Auditors should ensure that full administrative access is limited to a small number of administrators who are responsible for server-to-server interoperation and configuration, along with schema management. Personnel responsible for a subset of administrative functions, such as help desk personnel who reset passwords, should be given only the ability to perform their functions without any additional administrative access. And when it comes to creation, deletion and updating of accounts, automated tools, like a provisioning system, should do the job in order to minimize manual errors and guarantee protection of sensitive account information.

Active Directory groups – Active Directory groups are used to manage access to services at a macro level. By assigning a user to a group, the user automatically inherits the group's access privileges. Active Directory group management originally started out organically -- groups were created on the fly with little documentation and few controls -- and that led to a lack of understanding of the groups' original purposes by later administrators. This caused Active Directory groups to proliferate at a speed that made them hard to manage; this is one of the key areas for auditors to explore. In auditing Active Directory groups, auditors should look for clear, well-defined processes for the management of these groups. Also, documentation should be completed on who the group owner is, any projects the groups might have been created for, how long the groups are valid, what access the groups grant, and any other Active Directory groups related to the group in question that may be used for access.

Schema configuration – Active Directory stores information in a spanning-tree directory schema. Users and groups are allowed access based on their placement in the hierarchy and the access control lists (ACL) for the various containers, as well as objects for access rights (read, write, execute, delete). Auditors should review the layout of the Active Directory schema, and the associated ACLs, to ensure they are configured to provide sufficient separation and protection of information from other groups or users stored within Active Directory.

Strong automated account management – As stated above, most organizations have moved to automated provisioning tools to manage Active Directory accounts. But just because the tools are automated doesn't mean they're automated well. Auditors should look for well-defined processes for account requests and well-thought-out rules within the provisioning tool that ensure correct privileges. Also, accesses should be granted along with correct workflows when access requires the user's manager or resource owner to approve the access. In addition, auditors should ensure that any accounts not recently accessed, or accounts no longer needed, are disabled or removed in a timely manner. Finally, to ensure the right access privileges are still in place, the organization should have a "recertification" process wherein managers or administrators are periodically required to certify that the accesses for the persons under their responsibility correspond correctly to the users' responsibilities and the functions they perform.

Active Directory integration – While the list above outlines a number of Active Directory-specific requirements for securing the repository, the fact is that many legacy application and servers still can't directly access Active Directory and must be synchronized with it. This involves extracting information from Active Directory and electronically forwarding it to other applications and servers, where the information is then stored locally on the receiving system. Auditors should check to see if data transfers from Active Directory are still required by inquiring whether new methods are available to allow these applications and servers to directly connect to Active Directory and not copy its information. Auditors should also ensure that the Active Directory information in the local application or server has the same level of access controls as it has in Active Directory. Finally, auditors should ensure that the Active Directory information isn't forwarded on to other applications or servers from the receiving systems to make certain that the information can be tracked to all the servers and applications which consume them.

Active Directory has evolved from department-level PC control to a fully functioning enterprise directory. While initially Active Directory deployments were below the radar of most auditors, due to the ever-evolving role of controlling access, Active Directory is now clearly in the sights of organizational security and audit teams. Thus, while scrutiny of Active Directory security has increased many times over, it is fully justified. Due to the important access services it provides, organizations don't want the keys to the kingdom to be left unprotected.

About the author:Randall Gamby is an enterprise security architect for a Fortune 500 insurance and finance company who has worked in the security industry for more than 20 years. He specializes in security/identity management strategies, methodologies and architectures.

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Thanks Randall for the sharing your knowledge about AD security audit. I have used this active directory auditing tool which are available on http://www.activedirectoryaudit.com/. It provides safe and secure environment for this.

Focal point of administrative delegation for identity and access management. Organizations often delegate administrative responsibilities for account management, group management, password resets, help desk operations as well as OU management. Delegation of administration in Active Directory is done by provisioning adequate access for all the tasks that need to be delegated